Stellar Radii cont.

We can quantify the difference in the size of the two stars using Stephan's Law.

displaymath247

displaymath249

displaymath251

So the surface area of tex2html_wrap_inline223 Ori is tex2html_wrap_inline255 the surface area of the Sun. This star has a radius 432 times larger than the Sun. It is cool, yet huge hence the name tex2html_wrap261 .

Can play the same game with the low-luminosity hot stars at the left side of the H-R Diagram. Despite the fact that they have lots of energy radiated per unit surface area, they have a small total energy radiated - they must have small surface areas and get called tex2html_wrap263 .

You can play this game with all the stars and find an enourmous range of sizes from around 1/100 R tex2html_wrap_inline257 to nearly 1000 R tex2html_wrap_inline257



Michael Bolte
Thu Jan 29 09:33:26 PST 1998